StarTalk Radio - Searching for Space Water, with Natalie Starkey - StarTalk All-Stars

Episode Date: August 23, 2016

Water, water everywhere…and by everywhere, we mean the solar system, our galaxy, and the universe itself. Join us as we search for space water with our host, cosmochemist Natalie Starkey, co-host Chuck Nice, and planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

This is StarTalk. Hello and welcome to StarTalk. I am Dr. Natalie Starkey and this is StarTalk All-Stars. I am going to be your All-Star host today and joining me as a co-host I have comedian Chuck Nice. Hey Natalie. Thank you. Good to be with you again. Yes, it's going to be fun I think because today we are going to be talking about water in space. I want to just stress that I'm saying water, water, water.

I'm very British. Exactly, water. There's a T in the middle of water. Not water. Not water. You're not having water. We are actually talking about that as well. We're talking about water too.

It's the same thing. Talking about water too. I guess I want to talk about this subject because it's quite important, right? We drink water all the time. We drink liters of it. I'm going to say that water is indeed the most important substance on earth ever. Okay. You said it. Okay. I really believe that. There is nothing more important than water. I believe that is where the origins of life stem. Okay.

I believe that that is why it is the most necessary thing to sustain life. So it is where life began, and it is also what sustains it. And for some reason, we don't treat water like it's important. We need to respect the water. Respect the water. Respect the water. You are so right. And it's a bold statement, but I think, you know, it's fair enough. We do need to respect, but we need to understand where it came from, because it does appear that Earth is

the only planet in our solar system that has liquid water on its surface now it's not to say there isn't liquid water elsewhere but not on the surface of any other planets it's probably ice now there's loads of water in the solar system but it's it's probably as ice now importantly we think we need it as liquid for life to start to start and form and everything so why are we the only planet with liquid water? This is one of the big research questions and one of the questions we should be asking. I'm going to say it's because we're special. We are special.

We are. We are very special. I think we're special. I mean, just look around the solar system, okay? We're pretty damn special. All right? Take that, Venus. There we go.

With your hot climate surface. Exactly. Right. Crazy hot. We are basically the Bahamas of the solar system. Okay. You know, think about it. It's the place you want to be.

It's the place you want to be. I like that. Yeah, it's true. So, okay, to help us with this subject today, we have a world expert on water in the solar system and it is Lindy Elkins-Tanton. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much. That's all right. We're really glad you could join us. Now, I'm going to get this right. You're the director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. Is that correct? Arizona State University? That's exactly right. Okay. And what does your job involve? Just directing people around the university?

You over there, pick that up. I'm Director Lindy. I remind them that we're living in the Bahamas, basically. That's what I do. Okay. That's good. I serve, right? That's what directors do.

I try to make it easier for the scientists to do their jobs and answer their big questions. And a lot of people here are working on questions just like what you're talking about. Why do we have water here? Why is there not liquid water elsewhere? Why is the Earth not Venus? Thank goodness. Very cool. And your own research.

I mean, you've got a background in research as well. And that's what you've been looking at, right? You've been looking at this kind of how we get water on planets and all this business. So you are going to be quite helpful, I think, because today we're going to be looking at cosmic queries and trying to answer some questions from the peoples out there about this subject. So I think we should probably kick off and see how we go. Yeah, let's jump right into the questions here. And I'm going to take one from Dylan Hallihan, who is a Patreon patron. If you're a Patreon patron, what you get to do is send us a question and we will give it priority because if you're a Patreon patron, it means that you have supported us financially and you helped make this whole thing happen.

So it's actually addressed to both of you, Dr. Elkins Tanton and Dr. Starkey. Very nice. Very formal. Isn't that very formal? Still very cool. How likely would it be for us to set up a workstation in a Lagrange Point? Okay. Limit fuel consumption and keep equipment in safe location

near the moon Europa and be able to take multiple trips to analyze the composition or harvest the water that lies beneath it. Now that, to start off,

I'm going to tell you right now, to start off the Cosmic Queries with that, first of all, that's a super packed question right there. That is a big question. I mean, that's a huge question. I mean, this question really has more parts. It's got everything in there.

It's got everything. It's like a freaking cosmic cake that you got to bake. If a person is too sophisticated, we're going to have to get them to answer their own questions. Exactly. You know, before we get into this, let me just ask another question. This guy knows too much. Yes, right. Lindy, what is water?

No. I could do that one. All right. So we can break it down. Let's break this down and get into it. First of all, he's talking about a workstation in a Lagrange Point. Well, I was going to start first with the Europa part. I think that's the better way to get into this.

Okay, you're the doctor. First of all, why does he want to go to Europa? You know, that's the big question. What is so interesting about Europa? It is very interesting because what we think is happening there is that there is liquid water, but it's not at the surface.

It's under a surface of probably water ice. But the fact is that there potentially and quite likely is water under the surface. And why do we say potentially and most likely? What evidence do we have? I think, Lindy, am I right in saying it's not fresh water, is it? It's salty, I think.

Is that right? Yeah, so we think it's salty partly because fresh water is really rare in our solar system. And there we think that the water is actually in, there's a, there's an icy crust and then liquid water. And then underneath that, uh, a rocky core. And so the water and the rock are interacting. And, uh, when geysers go up from the surface, it looks like they have salt in them. So it's not freshwater, but it still could be good for life. Yeah.

And when you say it looks like it has salt in them when the geysers, you know, create their plume into space, is that because we're able to see that in some form? Yeah. So we can measure that material that's coming off. form? Yeah, so we can measure that material that's coming off. And so they know that it's, you know, it's got potentially some elements in it that look like it could be salty water. Now, the thing is that planet is kind of sounding a lot like Earth, right? We've got the rocky interior. I was about to say it sounds like our poles. We've got the oceans and okay, we've got ice on the surface in some places. So it is one of the key places in the solar system that we're wanting to

go in the future to actually look for life. But first of all, we need to understand the moon itself a bit more. But this is, I think, why this person is asking this question. Dylan is saying this. This is why we want to go there, and we definitely do want to go there. Now, the second part of the question, in terms of setting up a camp in an orbit around it or something, I guess that is going to be extremely challenging. I mean, Lindy, I don't know what you know about this, but I think that would be,

I think first of all, we just need to probably do a flyby and potentially drop something in so that we can work out what is going on there. But trying to, you know, get into orbit around something that's so far away that we don't know much about still would be challenging. That's right. So first, that's so far away that we don't know much about still would be challenging. That's right. So first, we're just trying to send a mission that's going to do a whole series of flybys and look at Europa from different points of view. And right away, there's a giant challenge because there is such strong radiation that we don't even think the robotic spacecraft is going to survive for long, let alone a

person. Now, that's a huge, huge challenge. So the radiation itself would actually interfere with the instrumentation. Yeah. Yeah, we think it'll break down the instrumentation. I heard someone say recently that if you could put an unshielded person on the surface of Europa, they would die from radiation poisoning in a matter of minutes. It's that strong.

It's that strong. It's that strong. Yeah. So I don't think we want to hang around. And, you know, NASA always says you have to limit the number of technology miracles that you require for every mission. And this idea of going and hanging out in the Lagrange Point and then zooming back and forth, that's – I can't count that high. That's a lot of technology miracles. That is. All we need is a starship with shields. That's it it yeah and you know what are you on this you got this

covered we we can that's easy we'll just do that but you know in terms of lagrange points i mean i think it's something that we can think about around the moon because this is a body we understand a lot better and you know it in terms of we would talk about asteroid mining, that's one of the ideas, we drag something into low moon orbit, and then we can mine it. And, you know, it's a bit easier, because it's closer to us. But when you try and extend this out into the solar system, it just gets so much more complex. And we know so little about these objects that it's basically impossible at the moment. But you never know in the future. We need to take small steps, like the Apollo mission, small steps, and we get there eventually. So now I'm really fascinated by the fact

that the radiation is so strong that it will actually impede the function of instrumentation. With that in mind, is there any attempt to create those circumstances somewhere here, close by, and then test instrumentation so that we can send it there. Is that a plan in the works at all? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So stay tuned because NASA has every intention of sending a flagship Europa mission. There's no launch date yet, but they've actually chosen the instruments. So we're really trying to do this. We are.

Does this mission have a name at the moment? It's had several names. I don't know what its official one is. And the controversy right now is, do we do what some of the congressional supporters want and try to send a lander? Or is that too many technology miracles and we're just going to fly by?

Okay. Okay. That sounds good. That sounds great. But this isn't going to be for a while? No, no, there isn't even a launch date yet. I think we have to get past Mars 2020 and then some other budget issues.

And see if there's any money. Oh, God. Now, see, that's where it all screws up. When you start asking for the money. Yep. There's no money. And the funny part is there's tons of money. There's so much money.

In the wrong places. Yes, exactly. I mean, seriously, the billions of dollars that we give in tax credits to just one oil company. I mean, do you think we could do this for about $4 billion? Do you think if I gave you $4 billion? That's about right, actually. Yeah. Okay.

So there you go. That's one year. That's one year of tax credits. Wow. Can you imagine? That's one year of tax credits and we could get this done. This is crazy. Okay.

Don't get me started. Okay. We won't. All right. It's crazy. Okay, don't get me started. Okay, we won't. All right, here we go. How many cents per person, you know, and it's not much. It's not much. I'm just going to give you that assignment too, I think. Okay, I'm on that one for you. Okay, Lindy, I'm on that one. All right. Okay, here we go. I like this. Nate Carlson from Ottawa, Canada would like to know this. How did large moons like Europa and Enceladus end up with so much water while others like Io are mostly rock? So he went from Jupiter to Saturn and two different moons that we know have a lot of water.

Yeah, yeah. It's a good question. But then when you do think about most moons, you don't think of we know have a lot of water. Yeah, yeah. It's a good question. But then when you do think about most moons, you don't think of a moon as a place with water. You think of a moon as a dry desert, rocky, crater-filled, you know. Well, that's because we think of our moon, you know, and that's what we see. Because it's our closest neighbor and we look up and we go, oh, it's there and it's dry and rocky and, you know, fair enough. But, you know, they're all different and they're all formed in different ways and so they've got you know different origins and therefore they're going to look different after they're formed so i mean i think part of the question of the answer here is

um basically i think it's the proximity of the moons to their big planet so we take jupiter if you're really close to jupiter the effects that that massive planet has on a moon are going to strip away the atmosphere, any water away from that moon. Whereas I think, am I right, Lindy, in saying like Europe is further away, so it's managed to maintain its water? Is that right? I think there's a mixture of things. I think you're right. It depends on what the history of the moon is. You know, was it from a giant impact the way the Earth was? Was it accreted from material very close to the planet or from farther away? And then, indeed, how does the planet affect it? Does it have its own magnetic field that helps shield it, or is it just fall victim to being

stripped of everything by the magnetic field of its larger planet? Ah, okay. So all those things come together to pretty much determine whether or not. And that's why you see it. I love the fact that he used Enceladus along with Europa. Yeah. Because now we have two different moons, two different planets. Yeah.

And they do share those characteristics. Exactly, yeah. Cool. Yeah. All right. Hey, Nate Carlson, man. Nice question, buddy. Nice question. All right. Let's go to Anna Magnus. Mangus. Sorry, not Magnus. Mangus. All right. It's a Mangus, baby. All right. Anna wants to know this. Hello,

this is Anna from Phoenix. Given the fact that we only see life-sustaining water in a few places in our solar system, how likely is it that in other solar system galaxies, there is water like we have on Earth? Oh, yeah. Okay. Great question. Yeah. We agree on that. Where can we start?

Ana, good job, because both of them got excited at the same time. So that was a damn good question. Okay, Lindsay, you go ahead. Okay. First of all, yay, Phoenix. That's what I mean. So this is something I'm really obsessed with. Obsessed?

Does the water get built into the planet through its normal process of building up to planet size, or does it have to get added later? normal process of building up to planet size or does it have to get added later we used to be taught that the earth got its water from comets that struck the surface after the earth was pretty much completely made and now we have lots of evidence that that's not true oh really lots of evidence that the water on the earth came from rocky material the same rocky material that built up the bulk of the earth and if that's correct it's not that later water wasn't added i mean we still have stuff falling to the earth today and adding water but the point is it wouldn't be necessary and so if it's true that the earth was born wet then that means that rocky planets everywhere in the universe have a very good chance of being born wet and then the

question becomes how long can they stay that way? There's some lifetime to habitability, and it's not going to be long enough everywhere. Let me just say that that will be the name of my first erotic rock and roll album, Born Wet. Secondly, if you could please tell me how you get water from a rock aside from being Moses. If you could please tell me when you say that you think the water was built into the rock. Yeah, okay.

And also the thing is the earth was really, really hot to start with. So this is what I don't understand about these theories. Although I've read Lindy's papers, obviously, but it is still hard to understand how we would trap all that water in the earth when it was, you know, thousands of degrees Celsius. Right. Because water is volatile and it's going to evaporate away. So how do we keep it in the earth if it, you know, went through this? So water, we think, was delivered in crystals that had water trapped inside the crystal, like mica. There's a mineral that a lot of us have played with.

And it turns out that there are water molecules actually trapped inside those crystals. Holy crap. So it doesn't come as ice, and it doesn't come as liquid water. It actually comes as rock, which is kind of crazy. And so then it also turns out it's really hard to dry things. Even if you melt that rock and even if you melt it and raise it up to thousands of degrees, there's still going to be a little bit of water stuck in that liquid magma because water just doesn't go away that easily. It likes to hold in.

So people say to me, how can that be, right? It doesn't make sense, really. But it's fascinating. I mean, honestly, as a concept, it really does. The crystal itself is holding the water. It's holding the water. To unlock the water in the crystal, because the crystal is a crystal, you would have to superheat that crystal to release the water molecule. And if that didn't happen, then you can retain that water in the earth, and then it can stay there.

And then still water can come in from elsewhere. Right. Meaning the water we end up with is a bit of a mixture of potentially different sources, but actually, you know, some of it was there from the beginning. Now, unfortunately, we have run out of time on this question. I know. We can come back. We can come back.

All right, good. We got to come back. Because there's plenty more to be had here. But for the time being, we're going to take a short break, and we'll be back shortly. And welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. I am Dr. Natalie Starkey. I still have Chuck Nice with me here and lindy elkins tanton joining us from arizona yes back to the cosmic queries back to the cosmic queries now you know

we had to take a little break but uh i really did kind of step on on a mongus's question when i interjected my uh my question about the crystals but uh let's get let me just give her the uh proper do. Okay. Okay, because here was her actual question. Given the fact that we see life-sustaining water in a few places here in our solar system, how likely is it in other solar systems and galaxies there is water like we have on Earth?

So that's the real crux. We got off into the crystals and, you know, that whole deal, which is fascinating. It is. And it's important. And very important. But please go ahead and finish Anna's question. Okay, so Lindy, elsewhere, I think you alluded before that, you know, yes, it's quite likely in the way we think the water in Earth is present.

It was trapped in the beginning, but actually this could happen lots of times elsewhere or throughout the universe. But we haven't, have we seen any yet? Have we actually detected it? There's hints of what's in the atmospheres of exoplanets around stars far away, but only about 12 of them have had any part of their atmosphere measured yet. So that's really an unknown area for us all we can really do right now besides work on making those measurements is learn more about how water is delivered to our planets here in our solar system yeah yeah cool that's yeah that is it these things are very far away but i i strongly believe there is life elsewhere in the universe and because there's water i think there's just got to be.

This place is so huge that, you know, it's unimaginable. But I think it's got to be there. Now, a couple of years ago, I saw this, I read this article and there was a discovery and it was more of a postulate than a discovery. Okay. there may be, when we consider all of the galaxies that we know, and now with the information that we have from the imaging that's coming back, that there might be as many as 600 million planets like Earth. Wow.

Is that true? Yes. Yes, that is true. Cool. That is exciting. That's very exciting. And so with 600 million planets like Earth, what does that do to the likelihood of life and even sentient life? Yeah. I mean, it's a huge number to even imagine.

This is like so – I just – it has to be that there has to be life somewhere else. I'm just absolutely sure of it. When we say they're Earth-like, we should probably explain why they're Earth-like. Because we end up, we basically to get an Earth, we need a planet orbiting a star that is, it's kind of the right distance away from the star. And it's got to be the right size star, so it's not too hot, not too cold. And that this planet is at the right distance that it could have liquid water on its surface. But it probably needs an atmosphere there to contain it. Probably needs a magnetic field to keep it kind of safe.

And and therefore it's kind of what we call the Goldilocks zone. So this is, you know, the porridge. Sorry, the oatmeal, whatever you call it here. Oh, it's porridge. Yeah, it's porridge as well. Not too hot, not too cold, just perfect. So that we have the really good conditions like we have on Earth. So these planets exist and there's a lot

of them. We, you know, it's hard finding them, but they're there just because they're so far away. But yeah, there are a lot of them. I think they've got to contain life. What do you think, Lindy? Is there life out there? I think that there has to be. I'm with you. But here's the thing that we really don't know. I think we're pretty confident that there are really a lot, hundreds of millions of billion planets like the Earth. But how long does it take and how unlikely is it for life to actually start? If we have evidence here on Earth that life only started on Earth one time, even though we had the perfect conditions, does that make it less likely? However, I'm with you. There has to be life. but we don't yet

know if there isn't life elsewhere in the solar system i mean that's the thing there's not complex life so we know that because i think we would have seen it by now but you know we're still looking on mars there might have been life in the past the other thing that we have to take into consideration though is that there could have been life and it could be gone. Yes, exactly. Because our solar system will one day be gone. Yeah. So there is very possible that another solar system with the same type of conditions as an Earth planet like ours came along and now we're looking at that system

as a part of a black hole somewhere. Yeah, exactly. So that is, yeah. Okay, all right. It's a scary thought. That would be us at some point. Well, yeah. You know, I'm not going to worry about that because I've got a feeling that it might happen after I'm gone and I'm that selfish.

Speaking of selfish, here's a great question from Travis Sheeves. We're going to bring it back to Earth. I know both of you are, you know, concentrated on space, but here's a, when we're talking water. Earth is in space. It's all the same. We've got to look at the Earth to understand space. Okay. All right. Earth is in space. I'm going to remember that. Keep remembering that, because that's a good one. Earth is in

space. Travis says this. One big issue facing humans, especially in the third world countries, is access to clean drinking water. Is there a way to possibly manufacture water through chemistry? Or is it just not as simple as throwing two hydrogen atoms together with one oxygen atom? Is it even possible to create water? Or is there a finite amount available on Earth? That's a great question. That is a good question. And you know,

it's a huge problem for when we want to explore the solar system. Because if we're going somewhere else where there's no water, then we need to take it with us. Or we need to pop by a comet or an asteroid on the way and, you know, get some water from it, melt it, you know, take it with us because we need water. And humans are not going to survive very long without it. So if we want to go to Mars, that, again, is one of the big challenges for having humans on Mars, because to get water off the planet is hugely expensive. It's not very efficient to get, you know, to launch stuff into space. So, so this is a big problem. We need, yeah, we need to find a way to either mine it on these planets, if there is any water, but you know, most of them are bone dry. That's a big problem. But in terms of the Earth, we have enough water, it's just in the wrong places most of the time, if you know

what I mean. It's like, right, exactly. I don't think we need to find a way to manufacture it. It's it's more of a way of getting clean water. We have a lot of saltwater, but it's getting the clean, fresh water in the right places. Linda, do you have anything to add? I just agree with you completely. There's plenty of water, but too much of it is dirty or too much of it is salty. plenty of water but too much of it is dirty or too much of it is salty and we don't know where to find more clean water and making the dirty salty water clean is expensive yeah but you can make water and i was so excited when i did that in the lab the first time we were doing experiments uh in these little tubes and the inside the tube was hydrogen and And if you open the tube and the hydrogen started to burn, it makes water. Because when you burn hydrogen, you add oxygen.

You oxidize it and it makes water. Wow. And somehow making it and seeing the drops of water fall down was kind of mind-blowing to me. Because you could do it hypothetically or like in your head. But this was for real. We were burning hydrogen and making water. Yep. And this is why she's a scientist because we find these kinds of things interesting. That is very interesting. I mean, honestly, you're burning hydrogen to create water. That is crazy. I mean, that's crazy. That's basically a James Taylor

song. You know what I mean? That's really what it is. It's all about emotions. So, wow. So now, the fact that you've done this in a lab, if we ever got to a place where we actually had to create water, and this is what he was saying, we would be able to do that, as Travis wants to know. We would be able to create water out of nothing. I guess so and I think didn't they do this in the Martian I don't know it wasn't this Matt Damon was up there doing this it went it went a bit wrong didn't it but you know when you're burning hydrogen you got

to be a bit careful but yeah okay hey Travis great question man that was very very cool um late and let me put an addendum on his question so um you talk about salty water, water being the wrong place. You talk about salty water, you talk about dirty water. Yeah. Is there, now we'll never run out of water ostensibly because three quarters of our planet is water. And we have a water cycle. And we have a water cycle. Everything goes round and round.

And our ecosystem is part, creates the water cycle. Yeah. cycle. Is there a way if we stay on our current course that we would actually dirty enough water that we will run out of water? Is that possible? I don't know. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. I don't see why not because we're not very careful with it. And I guess at some point, you know, we'll have to find a way to make all the water clean and that will be hard, but we can, you know, we can desalinate the seawater. It's really expensive and it takes a lot of energy to do that which is the main problem um i yeah i have no idea lindy yeah and so the simple answer is yes because it's a finite there's a finite amount of water so you could make it all dirty but the thing that i learned recently that

really shocked me is most of the water that we get is from wells. It's from underground water, you know, aquifers. Not only do we not know how much water there is in aquifers on the earth, almost none of that is legislated. Governments don't control how much water you take out of aquifers almost anywhere. So we don't know how much there is, and we're not tracking it and taking care of it. Wow. That's worry. That's worrisome, to say the least. I didn't know that until just recently. That's crazy. So what you're saying is there's no regulation on the amount of extraction, but there's also no effort to measure how much is actually there.

People are beginning to work on it, but we haven't gotten there. Wow. I'm just going to say that's really stupid, but that's just my opinion. We're trying to grow up. As a civilization, we're trying to grow up. We're in a sort of an awkward adolescence here. All right. All right. Hey, well, Travis, that was a great question, man. Really, really enjoyed that. All right. Here's a simple one. And this is Tom Ricks from Western Australia. There's never a simple question, is there though? There's no stupid questions. Let me just say this is a short one. Okay, it's a short one. I don't know if it's simple. I'm not sure if it's simple because our listeners, they're not simple people. Okay? True.

Tom Ricks wants to know this. Is a comet or is comet water salty or fresh? And can we find out? Oh, okay. That's a nice question. That is a nice question. Yeah. So, yeah, we can find out definitely because we can go and measure the water. It's in

the form of ice. So we have to be able to measure the ices. But this comes off as vapor when the comet goes via the sun and gets heated up. So we can measure either vapors with telescopes, or we can send a space mission and go measure these things. So this is definitely something measurable um and and we do do it in terms of fresh or or salty um i'm gonna hazard a guess it's fresh i should probably know this this is embarrassing uh lindy do you save me okay ready for this i'm gonna hedge this is called hedging okay so when you if you had salty water and you froze it the ice would be almost entirely fresh and so since the water didn't start as salty water and it's frozen i think it's mostly fresh but it's dirty because there's all kinds of other ices

and there are lots of rock fragments and bits of minerals and lots of organic matter, lots of complex hydrocarbon biological building blocks kind of stuff. And so if you took a whole comet and you melted it, you would definitely not want to drink it. Yeah, it would taste horrible. Speak for yourself, Lindy. All I'm saying is I can't wait to drink it. We don't just have water ice on these comets. Because of where they formed, it's super cold.

You can get other weird types of ice as well, like methane ice. Right. And so you've got a whole mixture. So, yeah, if you could just get the water ice itself, you'd probably be all right. But, yeah, I'm not sure I'd want to be drinking all the methane water and stuff. Because there's a lot of things that once you get to a certain temperature, they'll become ice. Yeah. A lot of gases that will become ice.

Exactly. At a certain temperature. Exactly, yeah ice. Yeah. A lot of gases that will become ice. Exactly. At a certain temperature. Exactly, yeah. Okay, and all that's mixed in. And when you say mixed in, are they mingled? Or are they mixed in as in you have one type of ice next to another type of ice? Yeah, I mean, it's probably a bit complex

because you've got the dust in the comet and these are all kind of fine-grained bits of rock, kind of small pieces of rock, just the dust that form the solar system. but mixed into that you've got organic material which we kind of say it's kind of gloopy it's like uh gloopy that's a scientific term that i like it kind of holds stuff together it's like a glue to hold these these dust particles together otherwise the comet well it wouldn't just fall apart because there's not much acting on it to make it fall apart but this helps us stick the stuff together. And then we've got the ices. Now,

in terms of understanding the distribution of those ices through the body, I don't think we have a good idea about that at the moment. But the methane ice forms what we call a clathrate. It's a different, it's kind of a different structure. It's got a different structure to normal ice. And that can actually, you know, have bits of other material in it, but you then have the water ice as well. I think, yeah, they're probably closely associated. Closely associated. It'll depend on the particular area of the comet. But yeah, it will be dirty.

It'll contain a lot of the dust and the organic materials. Cool, very cool. I don't know why, but every time you said ices, I had a patriotic urge to kick that comet's ass. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for that comet's ass. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for that. Everyone, please, I apologize. All right.

Have we got a quick one? Okay, let's get a quick one. And see, I said it was short, and you're right. It wasn't simple. It wasn't simple. It was a short question, but it really wasn't simple. All right, here we go. This is Heidi Heimler.

And Heidi says, are there any indications of possible life forms in the rocky material that may be the source of water on Earth? So that's kind of a, let's see, I said simple. That's a really cool question. And I don't know, you know, that certainly, I don't know if we got time for it, but that's a great question. Are there any indications of possible life forms in the rocky material that may be the source of water on Earth? A lot of stuff packed into that question. Okay, so I think what we can do, this is a great question. So, Lindy, do you want to start answering this question? We may run out of time in this segment, but we can come back because I think there's probably quite a lot to say. So, yeah. So the short answer is no, there's not.

Ah. What? But why not? We don't know why not. And so actually we're teaching a whole course about this in the fall to try to begin to understand why not because no one knows. Yeah. Wow. See that?

We did have time for that we had time but then why you know this is some of the questions we've got to ask okay and you know it should be so it is it's a really good question we can leave it there um and we're going to take a short break but we'll be back with star talk all stars shortly welcome back to star talk all stars i am. I am Dr. Natalie Starkey. I'm still here with Chuck Nice and Lindy Elkins-Tanton. And we are getting some cosmic queries about water in the solar system. We've had a great time so far trying to understand this complex subject. So you're going to... Let's move on. let's hit you with another question right here okay i'm still reeling from the crystals i'm telling you right now wet rock wet

is like freaking me out and uh by the way i for those of you listening and watching us here on our video of connect pal please look for my new erotic rock and roll album, Born Wet, named by Dr. Lindy. Okay? Thank you very much. I want licensing fees on it. All right. All right. Let us move on.

And this is Jalen Paxton. And Jalen is coming to us from Twitter, at Jalen Paxton. And Jalen wants to know this. What is the feasibility of using comets to combat freshwater shortages on Earth in the future? We kind of touched on this a little earlier when you were talking about the ices on a comet. And actually, no, I mean, it's a good question because they do contain a lot of water. But actually, asteroids also contain a lot of water. In fact, they could be, you know, tons and tons of water on asteroids more than in the Earth itself. So, and they might be easier to get to because we have quite a lot

of near Earth asteroids, which are close to us, which we can get to quite easily. But I think, as we've said earlier, it would be more useful to use those to go elsewhere in the solar system, because we, you know, don't have a huge water problem on Earth at the moment. So, I think if we want to go to those and mine the water, we can split it and use it for hydrogen fuel or we can use it to drink or survive um there's even talks about um the best way to protect yourself in space is it is from the radiation i think is to coat a spacecraft in in a kind of volume of bubble of water um like a womb. A space womb. Exactly. Oh, my God. A little protection bubble. Oh, it's such a safe and warm.

Back to your album. Back to your album. That's my second album. Space womb. So this might be a way to do it. Use the water from these asteroids or comets, but it's just, you know, they both contain the water. But actually... The asteroid is probably a better choice because you might find more water. It's just easier to get to. Easier to get to and more water. There's more of them

nearer to Earth. So, yes, that would be a bit better. All right. Very cool. Very cool. Let us move on. Oh, God.

I'm just laughing at the name. Electronic Janitor. Is this from Twitter? This is from Twitter. Twitter handle? At Electronic Janitor. Is this from Twitter? This is from Twitter. Twitter handle? At electronic janitor. Nice. That's a very cool handle.

Something tells me he's an IT guy who really hates his job. Exactly. He wants to know this. Where other than Earth have we positively identified water like we have here on earth okay but we have tons of different types of water on earth so i guess do we we've got fresh so we've got fresh water we've got salt water fresh water so yeah loads of places it's everywhere it's everywhere just it depends if you want it as liquid or or not but i mean we do there we think there is liquid in loads of other places so yeah so now here's what i want to know, based upon his question for you and Lindy.

You know, ice seems to be the order of the day. Because, you know, space is really, really cold. Yeah. But where does the ice get to be ice? Because it had to be someplace hot and something else before it became that ice on the asteroid or the comet. Okay. So where does that happen? Where does water become the ice water? Right. Well, you know, what is that? Is that in the formation of something or what happens to make that happen?

Okay. Lindy, do you want to? Sure. I can tell you what our best idea is, although I don't think we really understand this process yet. But it looks like when planets are forming, they start out just as a rotating disk of gas and dust around the young star. We see this elsewhere in the universe, even though ours is long gone.

And close to the young star, it's too hot for the water to be ice but further away from the young star ice is formed because it's cold even in that early dust and gas disk and so some of the ice could have been ice from the beginning of the solar system and it was never melted and then frozen again oh there we go look at at that. Primordial. So if we captured a comet, we could drink primordial ice from the origin of the solar system. So this is like four and a half, eight years old. That's a party I want to go to, Lindy, by the way. I know, that's good. Yeah.

A little vodka. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You know what I mean? Just like, you know, a little kettle one and primordial ice. Primordial ice, yeah. Can I have a kettle one on primordial rocks, please? So that's it. And you could get the ice made of different types of hydrogen.

So if you got like the heavy ice, then you'd get potentially ice cubes that might sink in your drink rather than float. Nice. Yeah. This could be fun. Oh, this is fun. I kind of like it. You could really charge a lot of money for that. Yeah. This could be fun. Yo, this is fun. I kind of like it. You could really charge a lot of money for that.

Yeah. Minority of ice. They're lining up right now. All right. Very cool. Very cool. Okay. This is Chris Jacobs coming to us from Twitter.

And Chris wants to know this. Do you think we'll be mining from asteroids or meteors in the very near future? It's a good question because we have now landed with Philae. Yeah. So how far are we from actually going in and mining? Yeah, that's really debatable because, I mean, it's something that we've, it's kind of come to the forefront in the last few years. And there's a couple of kind of private companies that are now looking at actually doing space mining.

Now, originally, I think they were saying it was going to happen really soon. And I think as scientists, we all stood there going, wow, OK, they're going to do this really quickly. And that's going to be very, very impressive if they can do it. And I think their plans have been slightly scaled back when they realized that actually it is going to be a little bit trickier than they thought. They've got to get the funding together. But the potential is that if they were to be able to mine these things, the return economically is enormous. So a small investment to start with, you know, we're still talking billions of dollars, but you could potentially release many, many more billions of, you know, from

these asteroids. And that's because, you know, of course, you being a geologist, inside of these asteroids are the same elements that we find here on Earth. Exactly. Which means the rare elements, the ones that are really expensive, we might be able to find crap loads of those. There's so much up there. And quite a lot of the precious metals

are so important on Earth for making a lot of our electronics. And there's a finite amount on Earth. We're going to use it up. It's in seams and stuff, and it's concentrated in different areas. That's why we mine in different areas on the surface. But with an asteroid, there's tons of this material.

So the potential is that, I mean, there's every potential that we can mine these these things but it's just going to be a case of time and economics and then we've got to decide how much we need say platinum how much we need the platinum uh and if we've run out on earth what price it's got to on earth and whether it's going to be economical to go into space and make this happen so i think it is going to happen in the future. And I think it's going to be a case of hopefully, what I hope is private companies working with space agencies so that we get some scientific return from this, but we also get whatever we need economically. So yeah, do you have anything to add, Lindy? Yeah, I can't resist. So they are thinking,

they've got even models for how they could go to a rocky asteroid, take some of that miracle water that's trapped in the minerals and heat it up to release the water. So it's feasible. It's not economically viable yet, like you say. But the thing I like to think about, we're trying to go to an iron, a metal asteroid right now with a mission to look at it. And if we could bring that back to Earth, you're right, it would be the equivalent of all the metals we've ever needed. But then you don't really make billions and billions of dollars because what you do is

you collapse the global market. Yeah, because then you have too much of that. Right, right. Because from an economic standpoint, if we had a crap load of gold here on Earth, gold would no longer be valuable. Yeah, so we'd have to kind of retain it. So there'd have to be organizations that retained it and released it as we needed it. Otherwise, there'd be no cost to it. The fact is you would own the asteroid and then you would release the gold as necessary.

You would own the asteroid and then you would release the gold as necessary. So you would basically corner the market on whatever it is, platinum, gold or whatever it is. And then you would determine how much you're going to release to set the price for it. And then there's other problems with who owns this stuff because it's space. You know, we understand Earth. We fight over who owns bits of the Earth and that's bad enough. But we're going to space. Well, who owns the stuff? So if a private company goes up, a U.S is it a u.s asteroid then is it a whole is it all u.s

resources or is it the global you know all i know is if i land on that asteroid it's yours that's my and if you think it's not you can kiss my asteroid, okay? Very good. Okay, okay. Let's go with Lucas M. Rodriguez. And he wants to know, which of the two icy moons is more likely to support life? In your opinion, Europa or Enceladus? Oh, that's a good one. Okay, so which one of those two moons from those two planets is more likely to have life? That is so, I could not decide, actually, between those.

They're both quite, I'm going to say highly likely to, they've got the right conditions almost. So, I don't know. Do you have an idea? I don't know do you have any do you have an idea i i don't know i think both could i can't immediately think of a reason why one would be more likely than the other but the the thing that troubles me about it is that the very most likely place for there to be life on them is at the bottom of the water ocean next to the rock okay and how we will ever detect that i don't know well i mean can we just so we've got to get through the ice they've both got an ice layer i guess on the outside um so we've got to

get through the ice with some kind of spacecraft and drop it in and then get that to get to the bottom of that ocean it's not very easy because if it's deep you know we find it hard to get to the bottom of our we can't even get to the bottom of our own ocean so the pressures are crazy the conditions are going to be not very conducive to you know getting you know to get to the bottom of our ocean. We can't even get to the bottom of our own ocean. So the pressures are crazy. The conditions are going to be not very conducive to, you know, getting, you know, to get a transmitting a signal back and to understand what's there. So, so yes, I guess it's going to be hard for us to tell. Yeah. Well, there you have it, Lucas, you have just given our two scientists a Sophie's choice. They cannot decide. Okay. Both my babies must die.

I can't decide. All right. That is fantastic. What is our next question? We'll come. Wait, let me see because I know we're running out of time. We are.

I saw a cool question from someone from the United Emirates and I just lost it. Oh, my God. People are listening everywhere. Yeah, people are listening everywhere, and that is what is so cool. All right. I can't.

You can't find. Oh. I can't. Oh, damn it. I'm so sorry. I just marked it, and I can't. I know. It's gone.

Oh, my God. And there's only three pages here. It's not like, what the hell just happened to me? Oh my God, ladies, I'm having a stroke. Oh, it's got to be there. They have to get a question. Keep looking. Keep looking. Oh my God. What they wanted to know was, can we make a substitute for water?

That's really what the question was. Oh, okay. Can we make a substitute for water so that when we are traveling to someplace else, instead of having a way station, can we make a substitute for water for both here on Earth and for space travel? And I'll look for their name while you guys answer that. Okay. But I guess it, yes. yes okay i get the question but it's understanding like why we need water and what water does on earth and water acts as a solvent and it it's it's basically allows us to for thing for reactions to happen um so but and there are other solvents as liquids that can exist in the

solar system that could do the same job. But we wouldn't be able to drink them or survive on them. That doesn't mean that other life forms couldn't, but we just haven't seen those life forms yet. We have like just a little bit of time, Lindy. Do you want to add anything to this? No, I think you nailed it. There's nothing else that will do it for people but water. Yeah. So water is it.

I mean, we could make a substitute but you know why would you right yeah that's that's really the deal exactly but it doesn't mean that other organisms couldn't other organisms elsewhere alien organisms might not need water that's the thing they need something that's liquid that probably that is not going to boil away and not going to freeze too easily that they can survive and inform it. And by the way, it came from, okay, here's the name, uh, uh, Shirag Jungla from Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. Wow. And they've got, you know, quite a lot of desert there, not much water going on. Can you, can you, can you just imagine why someone from Dubai might ask a question of, can we make a substitute for water? I know.

Because I'm so tired of eating sand. They've made a city out of sand. But I'm afraid that is all we've got time for. We are like at the end. I know. It was fun. It was a whirlwind. And you were great.

Yep. Thank you so much, Lindy. I really enjoyed this.wind. Yeah. And you were great. Yep. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Yeah. You've been great. You've helped me with some tricky questions. You had great answers. I didn't need to.

I was just nodding my head. Oh, well, I'm pleased. Thank you. That's very, I'm happy, but thank you so much.

Um, and I'm going to thank Chuck nice, my co-host. You've been fantastic. Um, but that's, yeah, all we have time for today. Um, but that's been All-Stars. I am Dr. Natalie Starkey. This is StarTalk.